The main message provide by Goleman is that EI is more important than IQ. Much like IQ, Emotional Quotient (EQ) can also be measured. Research suggests that the EQ can be much more effective in determining people’s success.

As you can imagine this concept was indeed controversial when it was first introduced. Since then, countless studies have proven the credibility of the EI concept. You can be very good technically but if you don’t know how to handle others or yourself emotionally, you are likely to fall behind those who were more emotionally capable, even if they don’t know as much technical detail as you do.

It is not all about technical ability.  Your success in life is much more dependent on how you manager your own emotions as well as those of others. It is a great mentality shift which could be quite different from what you might have been brought up with.  Most of us go through education systems that are highly biased towards the technical and logical side and spend little time training us on the all important emotional skills.

Naturally, this is a big claim and like all big claims it must be supported by evidence and research. Goleman provides numerous case studies in his original and subsequent books and in various articles that followed and indeed there is a strong case for EI’s effect on people’s life. The following are a selection of these studies. (Consult the references at the end for more details).

• A number of sales agents at L’Oreal were selected based on certain emotional competencies. They performed significantly better than salespeople who were chosen based on the company’s old selection procedure.
• A number of supervisors in a plant received training on EI to listen better and help employees to resolve problems on their own. This resulted in a significant reduction on lost-time accidents (50%) and the plant’s productivity was increased by $250,000 (Pesuric & Byham, 1996).
• Sales people hired based on emotional skills for a furniture retailer had half drop-out rates in comparison with those who were hired with the old company hiring process (Hay/McBer Research and Innovation Group, 1997).
• Research on debt collectors shows that the most successful collectors scored significantly higher in the emotional intelligence competencies of self- actualization, independence, and optimism in comparison with an average debt collector (Bachman et al., 2000).
• In jobs of medium complexity (sales clerks, mechanics), a top performer is 12 times more productive than those at the bottom and 85 percent more productive than an average performer. In more complex jobs (insurance salespeople, account managers), a top performer is 127 percent more productive than an average performer. (Hunter, Schmidt, & Judiesch, 1990).
• Competency research in over 200 companies and organizations worldwide suggests that about one-third of this difference is due to technical skill and cognitive ability while two-thirds is due to emotional competence. (Goleman, 1998).
• Research carried out by HayGroup shows the power of EI in the insurance industry. They provided emotional competency development support for 45 sales people. They setup two matched groups to compare their productivity and sales over the course of a year. The group which was trained on emotional skills performed so well that the company decided to halt the experiment after only 7 months so they could train the other group as well and benefit more from the increased productivity and sales!
• An EI program delivered to managers of an oil refinery over two years resulted in 20% increase in performance.
• Software developers are generally highly competent on the IQ part which is perhaps why they can benefit greatly from EI training. Software developers who received EI or were good at emotional skills could develop software three times faster than others.